If you are a starter, this article will break your heart. But I’m not sorry, and I pity you because you are hurting your website/blog. These common SEO Myths are why you are not succeeding in ranking your article in google SERP.
How many of you believe in myths?? If you belong to the Digital Marketing Family, don’t believe in Digital Marketing Myths. In the same way, Stop believing common SEO Myths as well. These myths are going to do total damage to your site rankings.
Let me share a little experience with you. This experience led me to write this article. I have a habit of checking my students’ blogs and their articles to make sure whether they are following strategies explained in class or not. One day, I landed on one of my student blogs, and I was surprised, and he was not following anything I explained in class.
I gave a call and asked what had happened? His answer was shocking. He started believing the SEO Myths and forgot the original concept. I even explained in class that these common SEO myths you need to avoid in real-time blogging to get a better ranking in SERP. But he got strongly influenced by one of the YouTuber and started believing these common SEO myths.
Common SEO Myths You Must Ignore
Bats are blind; Lightning never strikes the same place twice; Bulls become angry at the colour red. Etc. There are many myths around us, but never the harmful ones. Unfortunately, myths belonging to the SEO industry will affect our site ranking. Now let’s see some Common SEO Myths, which look true but are not. ● SEO Is a One-Time Thing
- Meta tags keywords Don’t Matter
- Focus Keyword in anchor text don’t work effectively
- Too Many keywords result in a ban from Google.
- Local SEO Doesn’t matter anymore
- Onpage SEO is Enough to get ranked in SERP.
- Domain Age is a Ranking Factor
- Blog Article Should Have More Backlinks
- Long-tail keywords are easier to rank
- SEO is something my IT person can do
It’s time to know the facts about these common SEO Myths you think it’s true.
#Myth-1: SEO Is a One-Time Thing
Out of other common SEO myths, this myth is very disturbing and definitely not the one to believe. SEO is not a one-time thing, buddy, and it’s a long-term process. We all go to the gym for weight loss. After one month’s effort, we start losing some good weight, and we think we deserve a break for a few days. We start eating chips and junk foods. You know what happens next. We increase the weight, and everything starts to fall apart. The same thing will happen with our blog traffic if we take a break from SEO.
Check out this image. This data is from one of my blogs. I have been active on this blog till August, and I got some digital marketing projects and started neglecting this blog. In this image, you can clearly see the rise till august and a fall from September.
At this point, I can tell you three reasons why my traffic went down.
- My Competitors are constantly working on SEO, and they overtook my rank in SERP.
- I lost some backlinks due to “Link Rot.”
- My content lost its “Freshness.”
Do you know? Most SEO marketers update their old content every month and keep it very fresh for search bots. Because SERP loves fresh content. If this myth, SEO is a one-time thing, is true, you will always see the constant growth in this data. It’s high time to stop believing this SEO Myth.
#Myth-2: Meta Tags Keywords Don’t Matter
Ooh God! Who created this myth?? Dude, Meta tags and keywords matter a lot, and Internet searches depend on Meta tags and keywords. Indeed, Google doesn’t use this for ranking purposes; however, meta tag keywords are still relevant as they indicate to Google what your content is about. Meta tags can also make your search results more appealing, which attracts more clicks from searchers. Check out this image with Meta tags and Keyword in SERP.
In this image, The bold letter indicates the keyword which you typed in the search bar. Meta Description makes you understand the summary of the article in just 160 characters. If you are impressed with the description part, click on the LINK to read the full article. This is what happens when we search for anything in SERPs.
Now check out this image with no meta description.
What do you do in this case? We simply ignore this link and go for another relevant link because we don’t know what’s inside the article or a website. Right?
For bloggers who use CMS like WordPress, you don’t need to worry about meta tags and keywords because they are interlinked with CMS by using SEO plugins. But if you are maintaining your website or a blog on a coding platform, here is the code you need to use for meta tags.
Here is an image for your reference
#Myth-3: Focus Keyword in Anchor Tag Doesn’t Work Effectively
Sharath is my 1st batch of Blogging students, who started earning money from his blog, recently asked about this SEO myth. There is no such thing. In fact, this is one of the best strategies for link building, and I agree Link building is the tough part of SEO. However, there is debate in the blogging and content marketing community about using keywords in your anchor text. As we all know, anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink that takes a user to another page.
The reason why content marketers argue about this point is over-optimization, and it looks like keyword stuffing. As a content marketer, I agree with them. But the fact is the anchor text keyword helps Google understand page content and helps determine relevancy when it comes to link building. So, instead of avoiding keyword-rich anchor texts, just change your approach by altering your anchor text to avoid over optimization. Let’s say goodbye to this common SEO Myth.
#Myth-4: Too Many keywords results in a ban from Google
You can consider yourself an amateur SEO marketer if you believe in this SEO myth. First of all, you need to understand the concept of keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is something you keep repeating the same keyword for N number of times in your article, and the general repetition of keyword percentage is 1%. Also, sometimes it depends on the number of words you write in the article.
If you keep repeating your focus keyword more than 1%, it results in a BAN from google. It’s not too many keywords that result in a ban from google. It would help your blog article if you changed your perspective towards this common SEO myth.
Now the question is, how many keywords do you need to add to your blog article? The thumb rule is, you can have up to 10 keywords per page/per article. It’s your wish to have 10 or below 10 keywords. I recommend you try the combination of five different keywords, which helps you avoid over-optimization in your article or webpage.
Your keyword combination should have,
- Long Tail Keyword (Focus Keyword)
- Short Tail Keyword
- Local Keyword
- Branded Keyword
- Customer-defining keywords
- Build your article around these five combinations of keywords and never fever about over-optimization. Remember, you need to write your article in such a way that keywords fit naturally.
The bottom line is to focus on creating natural and helpful content for your website visitors instead of counting keywords.
#Myth-5: Local SEO Doesn’t Matter Anymore
This is one of the ridiculous common SEO Myths with zero fact. 46% of google searches happen with the local keyword. More than 50% “near me” keywords result in store visits within 3-5hrs. Dude, even after seeing these percentages and still thinking local SEO doesn’t matter, you are losing potential clients around you.
The very first choice of the user is to find a service nearby his location. And second, to find service in his own city/town. If your site isn’t optimized for local search, those users may not find you, which means you are losing good business locally.
Let me show you the importance of local keywords in SERP. In this image, you can see the number of search results optimized with the local keyword. The number of search results depends on the keyword, and it’s different for every keyword. Now, check out this image.
I know the competition is huge, but you can crack google’s 1st page by avoiding these 15 common SEO mistakes.
#Myth-6: On-Page SEO Is Enough to Get Ranked in SERP
Well, this common SEO Myth is 50% right and 50% wrong. I strongly agree that we can rank our articles by doing perfect On-page SEO, and I have ranked many articles only by executing on-page SEO. But the question here is, Is it enough?? Nope, Not even close.
On-page SEO is not a golden bullet to crack Google’s 1st page.
- Off-page SEO,
- Domain Authority,
- Page Authority,
- Backlinks,
- linking domains,
- Blog Traffic,
- Guest Blogging,
- Social Media Presence
Are equally important factors. You need to focus on optimization like UI/UX, Off-Page SEO, Conversions. User Interface and User Experience (UI/UX) is very important for any blog/website. UI attracts the audience to stay on the blog, and UX helps users find what they are looking for. Site speed plays an important role in UI/UX.
The bottom line of this common SEO myth is Off-page SEO is equally important as On-Page SEO. Perfect On-page SEO ranks your website in Google SERP, but Off-Page SEO makes that article stay longer in the SERP and keeps you in the game.
#Myth-7: Domain Age Is a Ranking Factor
I have been asked countless times about this common SEO Myth in many Instagram lives and training classes. It seems like this myth will not die, at least not this soon. From a Beginners point of view, If they find a website that has been around for a long time and is ranking well, they think age must be a ranking factor. Nope, that’s not true. Even Google itself debunked this myth many times.
In fact, in 2019, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller replied to a tweet suggesting that domain age was one of “200 signals of ranking”, saying “No, domain age helps nothing.” Here is the tweet. Take a look.
The reason behind this myth is that an older website has had more time to do things well than a six-month-old website. For example, A website that has been live and active for ten years may well have acquired a high volume of relevant backlinks to its essential pages compared to the new blog or a website.
Verdict: It’s official that Domain age is not a ranking factor. It’s just a common SEO myth that needs to be avoided once it for all.
#Myth-8: Blog Should Have More Backlinks
I want to be honest with you. I have been a victim of this common SEO Myth, and Backlinks are important, and I agree with that statement. But backlinks from relevant websites play an important role. Anyone who has access to directories, forums can build links. But are you sure this practice is safe for your domain spam rank? Nope. Not safe.
Some SEO pros will tell you that backlinks are one of the many tactics that will impact rankings but are not the most important, whereas Immature SEO trainers will tell you it’s the only real game-changer.
I know many SEO Trainers say this when they start explaining Off-Page SEO. Back in those days, directories and forums with DA 20+ were good for your backlinks and blog traffic, and Link-building consisted of adding a link to your website wherever you could. Links from Forum comments spun articles, and irrelevant directories came under an effective backlink strategy. But not anymore.
Google has continued changing its algorithms that reward higher quality, more relevant links and disregard or penalize “spammy” links. Relevant backlinks, of course, help you with ranking, but they need to go hand-in-hand with other optimizations. Your website/blog still needs to have a relevant copy, and it must be crawlable.
Verdict: We need to stop believing in this common SEO Myth for our own good.
#Myth-9: Long-Tail Keywords Are Easier to Rank
I don’t know who created this SEO myth, but it looks true, but not at all. The truth is that the long-tail keyword fits naturally in the content, whereas the short-tail keyword looks like a natural fit and looks like keyword stuffing, resulting in a BAN.
It’s not easy to rank Long-Tail Keywords. Like short tail keywords, long-tail keywords also have unbelievable competition in the SERP Game. Here is the screenshot from the keyword research tool, tells you how hard the competition is.
The search volume for this keyword is unbelievable, and also the competition if the keyword has HIGH competition it’s hard to crack the game of SERP. So it’s up to you to believe this common SEO Myth.
#Myth-10: SEO Is Something My IT Person Can Do
I wanted to share a funny incident with you. In Feb 2021, I got an SEO lead, and I went to that company and delivered my SEO pitch. The very first thing he said right after my presentation was, “SEO is something my IT person can do. I know many companies using their IT persons for SEO work; what’s so special about your service?”
I was like, “Am I joke to you?” I’m not surprised that Local companies believe this common SEO myth, but the companies in metro cities also believe this crap. From my experience, I can tell you one thing: SEO is an Art and Science, and technical knowledge alone isn’t enough to have a better SEO strategy, and it’s definitely not the job of an IT person. A person with computer and internet knowledge is not the right person to do SEO for your website. He might have good knowledge of the Internet of Things but, we know how to rank your website.
Final Words
It’s time to leave these common SEO Myths in your Digital Marketing Career. If you still choose to carry forward these SEO Myths, you will be in deep trouble. I have listed down ten important and most common SEO Myths which we are surrounded by. There are many myths related to the digital marketing industry around us; before believing, consult your digital marketing mentor or a Trainer.
I’m open to your queries, but before that, let me know which of these common SEO Myths you came across and which one you left behind? I would love to answer and reply to your comments.